A group of Chicago immigrant activists joined advocates in other cities Monday in a call to boycott the Western Union money-wiring service, in the hopes of pressuring the industry goliath to lower fees for remittances and invest more in the communities it serves. The campaign, launched simultaneously in several cities, calls on Western Union to donate $1 per every money transfer toward economic development in the U.S. and in countries being sent money, said Carlos Arango, an...

LONDON, April 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Africans face the highest remittance fees globally, regularly paying a "super tax" to send money home at a cost that hurts families and holds back development in the world's poorest continent, a thinktank said on Wednesday. The London-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) said reducing remittance charges to global average levels would generate $1.8 billion, enough to put 14 million children through primary...

(Reuters) - Money-transfer company Western Union Co is being probed by the Federal Trade Commission and a U.S. district court over fraud-induced money transfers, the company said in a regulatory filing on Monday. The company said it received a civil investigative demand from the FTC on February 21, requesting documents related to consumer complaints regarding fraud-induced money transfers sent from or received in the United States since 2004. Western Union also...

Nov 15 - Fitch Ratings has lowered the Issuer Default Rating (IDR) for The Western Union Company (Western Union) and all senior unsecured ratings to 'BBB+' from 'A-'. The Rating Outlook is Negative. The ratings downgrade reflects the following considerations: --Western Union provided initial guidance for 2013 that is significantly below expected 2012 results. Specifically, the company believes revenue may be flat to down modestly but GAAP operating income may be down 10% to 15%...

The following items were taken from police reports: Arlington Heights •An 18-year-old Arlington Heights woman was arrested Dec. 17 and charged with the retail theft of $332 worth of maternity clothes from Kohl's, 800 W. Dundee Road. She had concealed the clothes in her purse and attempted to leave the store without paying for the items. She had already been served a no trespass agreement in August at Kohl's and had an outstanding warrant in Schaumburg. •An elderly resident of the 1200 block of...

Nov 14 (Reuters) - Western Union Co, the world's largest money-transfer firm, said Chief Financial Officer Scott Scheirman will be leaving the company, effective Feb. 28. Raj Agrawal, currently executive vice president, will serve as chief financial officer in the interim from Jan. 1 until a new replacement is found, the company said in a statement. Scheirman's resignation comes two weeks after the company warned of no earnings growth in 2014 due to higher compliance ...

Western Union Corp. said the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a formal order on May 28 to investigate whether Western Union filed untrue or misleading reports with the SEC from April 1986 through March 1989. It was reported in March that the SEC was conducting an "informal inquiry" into the timing of a writedown taken by the company in the first quarter of 1988 and possibly additional writedowns.

(Reuters) - Shares of Western Union Co fell as much as 19 percent on Wednesday, after the money transfer company said it did not expect earnings growth in 2014 due to higher compliance costs. The company reported better-than-expected results on Tuesday but said it faces new money laundering and fraud prevention measures in countries such as Spain and Britain. Western Union said costs associated with compliance are expected to be about 3.5 percent-4.5 percent of revenue...

Oct 31 (Reuters) - Some U.S. stocks on the move on Wednesday: (For more market insights, including options activity, click on STXNEWS/US; for the day ahead newsletter, http://link.reuters.com/mex49s; for the Morning News Call newsletter, http://link.reuters.com/faq23t) WALL ST EDGE HIGHER AFTER HISTORIC CLOSURE U.S. stocks edged higher on Wednesday in the first trading session since a massive storm in the U.S. Northeast forced a...

A subsidiary of Citicorp has filed a $105 million antitrust suit accusing Western Union Telegraph Co. of trying to prevent it from competing in the lucrative money-transfer field. The suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., by Citicorp Services Inc., charged that Western Union has used a wide range of "anticompetitive exclusionary tactics" that have frustrated its attempts to gain a profitable share of the "money by wire" market. Citicorp Services is...

MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.S. citizen and a foreign national were charged in federal court in Miami on Tuesday with providing financing and recruits to al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist organizations fighting in Syria and other places. Gufran Ahmed Kauser Mohammed, a 30-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in India, and Mohamed Hussein Said, a 25-year-old Kenyan, were arraigned on a 15-count indictment charging them with links to three U.S.-designated terrorist...

Western Union Wednesday was ordered to pay $72 million to a now-defunct independent teleprinter vendor for allegedly violating antitrust laws. A jury in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Charles P. Kocoras assessed a verdict of $24 million. By law Kocoras automatically trebled the verdict. Attorney Bruce Sperling filed the suit in 1977 on behalf of Olympia Equipment Leasing Co. and Alfco Telecommunications Co. and the two companies` founder, Abraham Feldman of San Francisco.

LAGOS (Reuters) - Western Union Co expects revenue from its digital business to grow to $500 million by 2015, from $150 million currently, its chief executive said on Tuesday. Chief Executive Hikmet Ersek told reporters during a visit to Nigeria's commercial hub of Lagos that while the digital business is only about 3 percent of its $5.6 billion total revenue, it was the fastest growing. "By 2015, I believe ... digital will be about $500 million revenue and today...

It pays not to offend your next-door neighbor. He might sue you. In this case, former Illinois investor Edward F. Heil has filed a suit against Bennett S. LeBow, chairman of Western Union Corp., and three others connected with the firm. Heil happens to live next door to LeBow on Fisher Island near Miami, according to Heil's attorney, Michael J. Rovell, who heads a Chicago law firm. But that's not the cause of the dispute. In his suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court here,...

Q--I own 1,000 shares of Western Union. What are the long-term prospects of this company? Should I buy more? A--It's probably not a good idea to buy more shares of Western Union (around $4 a share, New York Stock Exchange), since there's still a 50-50 chance the company will go bankrupt, said John Bain, analyst with Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc. The company's long-term strategy is to get out of owning microwave towers and other equipment and become a financial services company.